Innovation Management and Corporate Entrepreneurship

Many firms are compelled by the dynamic business environment to anticipate likely changes within their internal and external operating environments and devise strategies to address the problems that they are expected to confront. Such acts necessitate both entrepreneurship and innovation in a company’s ordinary administration. As a result, personnel in any organization must instill an entrepreneurial mindset and ensure that their activities are consistent with the firm’s vision. The challenges of entrepreneurship and innovation management often face multinational companies such as Google owing to the bureaucracy that is involved in the operational processes of such companies (Andries and Czarnitzki 2014, p. 22). Innovation is a useful tool for many businesses who would want to match up the new changes being introduced in the company and the revenue generated by a firm. The massive transformation process is an effective entrepreneurial strategy that ought to be sought by multinational business, especially those in the technological world, such as Google to drive positive and regular change in their business processes. Therefore, some of the issues that such companies have to address include the sensitivity to the interests of the stakeholders, managing the risks that the business could face and inculcating diversity and innovation in the operational culture of the company. This paper discusses corporate entrepreneurship and innovation management concerning Google.

Innovative performance of the company over the past five years

Google is one of the most reputable companies in the United States that has flat management structures (Spear and Roper 2013). Though the company has management structures in different business lines such as human resource, marketing, and sales, the work of the vice presidents and the managers is to connect various employees in different work lines as opposed to exerting control over what they ought to do within the company. Also, the company has a 20% policy that empowers their staff to test on the new ideas that they think would be of benefit to the company and their professional growth (Brabazon 2016, p. 170).

Google is the most popular search engine owing to the regular innovation that is carried out on a routine basis by the firm. It is a multinational company that majorly relies on innovation as a basis for offering new products to solve the issues that their clients face. Over the past five years, one of the significant innovation has been Google Translator. Such is the magnitude of the innovations that are being advanced by the company. There is ease of learning and reduction in transcription cost that an individual or organization may need to spend. Second, Google has created the comfort for anyone with a smartphone and the Google App to ask for directions and evaluated the traffic situation within his or her locality or where he or is going. Such has reduced the need to carry bulky hard copy maps as one is traveling. Third, the searches that are presented by Google are universal, and one can draw information from billions of websites and processed searched even from one single text search (Verma, et al. 2015, p. 18). For example, when one seeks about “Taxi in California,” Google offers results in the form of text, applications, maps, video, books and even images, thus, making the entire search universal and comprehensive. Fourth, Google, through its extensive package that entails applications such as Google Calendar and Gmail offers a reminder to an individual regarding any appointment that he or she could be having, thus, enhancing time management for the individual. The operations of the company automate the reminders. Fifth, Google has a means of keeping the search history of an individual and contextualizing the advertisements that they make through their search engines to the content that one searches. For example, if the previous browsing history was on finding flights, the popup windows that will result are the booking for hotels in the destination that wishes to go to and the comparison of cheap flights within the locality.

Diagnosis of the entrepreneurial practices for the five year period

The existing capabilities within Google Inc. can deliver the appropriate types of innovation that are needed to steer the company to the path of innovation and entrepreneurship. The management of the company being proactive regarding the changes that ought to make. The company has a careful selection of its staff based on their diversity and technical understanding of the work that ought to carry out within the company. Notably, blending skills in computer science and software engineering enables the company to offer new and innovative products, especially applications that provide solutions to the routine problems that are faced by humanity. The work culture within the company is disruptive with the management committing to change. Furthermore, the leadership of the company recognizes that their staff members are innovative by nature and should not be limited by the operational procedures and processes within the company that hampers their innovation (Koryak, Mole, Lockett, Hayton, Ucbasaran and Hodgkinson 2015, p. 93). Any idea that is suggested by staff is taken up and tested for its efficacy (Carayannis, Sindakis and Walter 2015, p. 101). Therefore, each employee is granted an equal opportunity through which they can express their innovative capabilities for the company. The evaluation of the work that has been done by the staff is evaluated based on the level of innovation that they can exude (Chen, Wang, Nevo, Benitez-Amado and Kou 2015, p. 651).

The Google management is also structured towards entrepreneurship. The collective entrepreneurship strategies that are sought by the company enables the company to collaborate with bloggers, advertisers and viewers, through the joint enterprise, the company rakes in approximately $9 billion in revenue (Goffin and Mitchell 2016, p. 87). Regularly, the company often scouts for new investment opportunities that would enable it to make more money and improve the revenue that the company generates. The entrepreneurship model is set in that the bloggers have the role of developing content through the Google platform whereby the viewers can get the content that they need based on the searches that they make. In return, the traffic increases enabling advertisers to market their products directly to their target market. In return, the advertisers pay, with the revenue generated is shared between Google and the bloggers. Google regularly evaluates the blogs that they host in their cyberspace to ensure that there has the necessary content that is attractive to the viewers. As such, based on the operation model of Google, the company does not only lead innovation in the technological reality, but has a business model that is in line with the technical changes brought up by the staff of the company (Lazer, Kennedy, King and Vespignani 2014, p. 1204).

Google recruits people and rewards them for their innovative ideas. The awards are often in the form of honorary recognition and financial rewards for the lucky people whose approach has been taken up by the company. The purpose of the prizes is to enable the employees to work harder in bringing up newer innovation that would reach millions of users. Furthermore, Google grants the entrepreneurs the use of its cyberspace is the testing and use of their innovative products, thus, enabling the new entrepreneurs to boost their professional profiles based on the innovations that they make (Sahut and Peris-Ortiz 2014, p. 665). Additional benefits that Google has to offer to the original innovators is funding for their ideas including the acquisition of the new ideas that have been developed. The ideas that are acquired by the company are well funded and in some circumstances isolated to grant the developers the independence of building up their new approach as is the case with Google Wave. Google rewards for both the success and failures that have been recorded in the course of the new product development, thus, motivating the employees to spring up new ideas about technological advancement.

The organizational processes that support entrepreneurship are the 70-20-10 rule that establishes that the staff ought to spend 70% of their time doing their core work in the company and the remainder of the term in other activities that could be complimentary but not necessarily about the core work that they ought to do. Such grants the staff the freedom to come up and test the new ideas that could drive forth growth within the company. The constraint that the company may face in bringing up all the ideas to fruition is the financial strain owing to the thousands of ideas that are presented to the group and testing of the various innovations. Owing to the financial constraints, only some ideas that are deemed best are financed. Thus, only a fraction of the potential entrepreneurs gets to benefit from the program.

Innovation challenges in the company are identified based on the mentorship that is granted to the different innovators. The daily testing of the new projects that are brought up by the team is used to determine the extent to which they sole the existent needs. The identification of products that are duplicated in nature further enables the company to identify some of the challenges that some staff may have in coming up with new technologies. However, where there is an identification of the challenges staff training and taking offering process and product mentorship helps in resolving the redundancy that would lead to innovation challenges (Urban Wood 2017, p. 535). Furthermore, the external stakeholders are well rewarded for any new product that introduces into the company. Google invests in the improvement of the capacity of their employees as the basis for enabling them to continue being innovative to the company. The establishment of Google Cafes allows the staff to interact and share the new ideas that each is coming up and offering peer mentorship to the benefit of the company. The Google moderator also enables the employees any new idea that has been brought up in a meeting, thus, vetting each new approach based on the extent that it would realize positive benefits to the firm.

During the launch of the various products that are produced by the future innovators, there is the recognition that some would fail, and some have the uncertainty of hitting the market with success. A notable example is a failure by Google wave to hit the target market leading to its closure despite the losses that had been incurred by the company in putting it up. The management of failure within the organization is managed through the regular trials of the new idea on a daily basis and sharing of the product concept before the company begins to invest in the new ideal. Calculating the feasibility of the new approach that has been brought out is a risk management process that limits the potential of investing in ideas that could not be of benefit to the company. Furthermore, Google has a research lab that is used to evaluate each ides and incubate the new projects that are brought up by the new innovators with the intent of developing suitable applications to be used by the clients of the organization (Palacios-Marqués, Merigó and Soto-Acosta 2015, p. 1908). The management of Google are risk takers and have the assurance that the inability to take a risk in the new ventures would make some innovators shy of coming up with a new application and technological breakthroughs. Failure is recognized as part of experimentation with the innovators granted another opportunity to try out until it becomes successful. Innovations are new ideas in the market that do not mimic any existent project (Turner and Pennington 2015, p. 456). Therefore, there is need to offer rook for failure with the intent of facilitating learning and encouraging the spirit of risk-taking.

Exploitative learning in Google is affirmed through the regular innovations that are brought up by the young innovators. For example. Improving the search indexes and adding more content in the search engines is realized through the exploitative learning in the organization (Martín-de Castro 2015, p. 145). Exploitative learning is deemed to come up with new uncertainties that the company has to address in their continued product development process. The incubation centers are solely for exploitative education where staff or an independent individual may come up with a new idea that has never been realized. Additionally, the work culture in Google encourages both exploitative and exploratory work culture owing to the freedom that is dedicated to doing the routine work and researching the new idea. Based on the working model that is pursued by Google, 70% of the total employees’ time is dedicated to exploitative learning while 30% of their time is devoted to explorative learning. Therefore, there is more commitment to the improvement of current technology used by Google and lesser time in coming up with the newer technologies.

Corporate entrepreneurship change program for Google

One notable innovation challenge that Google is facing is coming up with innovations that are relevant to the target consumers. Coming up with innovations that do not solve the routine problems that are met by the global population is likely to increase redundancy and lead to wastage of the company’s resources (Bloodgood, Hornsby, Burkemper and Sarooghi 2015, p. 385). Google Glass is an example of a technological misfit that was innovated by the company without taking due consideration of the existent need of such product in the market. Additionally, the data gathering operations by Google tend to limit the capacity of the company to enhance the security of its system and that of its users especially in critical areas such as transactions involving cryptocurrencies. Google commits to ensure that there viewers and clients are safe and the personal records including e-mails are safe. Such has led to the development of programs such as Google Vault. Though the technology addresses issues on defense against cyber-attacks and protection of data, there is a need for the technology to grant their users of trust and assurance for the protection of their safety while browsing.

Therefore, some of the most commons of entrepreneurial practice deficit include addressing of the innovation challenges faced by the company, strict process in recruitment and reward of individuals for their entrepreneurship (Kuratko 2016, p. 121). Many search engines are increasingly coming up, thus, the need to ensure that the content developers are well rewarded for their content that would lead to a higher web traffic through the Google search engine. The cyberspace that Google creates to the bloggers needs to be justified through the creation of content that is relevant to the needs and enables the viewers to find the information that they need from the searches. Borrowing of ideas from other companies that have created successful entrepreneurship change program would offer ideal information that the company would need (Chaston 2017, p. 13). Examples include the change programs such as Unilever sustainable living plan and European Unicorn report.

Unilever’s sustainable living plan addresses the critical issues that ought to be solved with any new technological innovation (Drucker 2014, p. 28). The program is pegged in reducing the ecological footprints that the company has to the environment. The essence of the firm borrowing from the innovative idea is pegged on the need to have relevance with the target market on the new product that is presented to the market. Google needs to take leadership in the innovation of applications and technologies that will serve to sort out the issue of sanitation and climate change in the global realm (Chen, Tang, Jin, Xie and Li 2014, p. 9). Such can be done through the creation of applications where people can learn on how they can reduce their environmental footprints and further sponsor the local innovators who come up with programs that could help in the reduction of environmental issues faced by the modern society.

The case of the European Unicorn report documents the growth and the establishment of billion-dollar tech companies that have taken up a full effect in the European markets. The profitability of the unicorn companies has seen a progressive and sustainable growth in the technological realm. There is a trend in which the investment in technology in Europe is growing higher compared to that of the United States of America. Google needs to take leadership of technological investment by offering competitive remuneration for the technological entrepreneurs who use its cyberspace (Chen, Tang, Jin, Xie and Li 2014, p. 11). The profit sharing model should favor the entrepreneurs with the innovators taking up 60% of the revenue that is generated, 10% goings towards content development and 30% of the income being taken by Google for the provision of the cyberspace. The provision of additional technological hubs in regions such as Europe would serve to improve the profits that are generated by the company (Schrempf-Stirling, Palazzo and Phillips 2016, p. 703).

The prime location of the innovative activities of Google should be based in Europe instead of the United States of America based on the trends documented by the European Unicorn reports. Entrepreneurship and financing of new start-ups require new investors willing to finance the new start-ups (Hamermesh 2014). Therefore, Google should take up the advantage of willingness by the investors to fund the new business models. Google has not been developed to serve the tastes of their home nation buyers. Google is a multinational company that is reputable for taking innovative initiatives in the technological field (Carroll 2017, p. 166). Therefore, Google has the independence of making an advance of the emerging unicorn business in Europe to set up a strategic office location in the region that targets the new technological start-ups.

The emerging markets can develop new products. The increased investment in technological applications and financing is an indication of the new products mushrooming within the region. Benchmarking of the way through which the unicorns have been growing over the last decade in Europe would serve as a lesson of increasing the investment in similar activities in the United States (May 2016. The lesson learned from the Silicon Valley, and the Euro corn would offer quality information on how entrepreneurship and innovation ought to be modeled to advance growth in the technological sector (Jackson, Hornsby, McMullen and Kuratko 2015, p. 17749).

Concisely, there is need to take advantage of micro-labor and collaborative consumption s opportunities for growth in new products that are in line with the tech models. There is need to recognize that both the innovators and Google benefit with Google offering lucrative offers to the innovators whose ideas are successful based on the business model of Google.

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